Almost 60 years ago singer/songwriter (poet?) Bob Dylan scribbled the verses to his “The times they are a-changin” on a battered sheet of binder paper which recently sold for over $400,000. The song was written in a specific context, but it has become a kind of anthem not only for frustrated youth and civil rights, as it probably was back then, but a call to action for all kinds of people and movements seeking change for the better, or as our advent faith calls it “metanoia.”
This season in the secular calendar, as well as in the church year, is all about changing times and our own calls to action today. The secular calendar as well as the changing colors, light, colors, temperature and autumn leaves all around us point us to changing times as we get out the cameras, the rakes and the leaf blowers to welcome in another season.
In these days of the church’s year of grace, we begin a new Advent calendar celebrating the communion of saints who have gone before us, both those officially canonized and those not (yet) officially recognized. We celebrate in anticipation of Christmas, but also in expectation and hope that we too will someday join that great cloud of witnesses when the saints go marchin’ in.
As Dylan’s song did, this calls us to action, our own ongoing “seasoning” through our own “metanoia,” a transformative change of heart that is at the root of Jesus’ mission.
This suggests some questions for our reflection about our own personal and communal seasoning in this first week of Advent:
What we want to leave behind?
What new growth do we want to cultivate?
What new hopes of transformation is God calling us to?
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius we offer you through White House’s ministry provide a helpful time and place for all of us to continue singing “The Times They are a Changin” and acting for metanoia.
-Fr. Ted Arroyo, SJ
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